Spotify: How do you like to pay for entertainment?
The other day I was reading reviews of the Spotify iPhone app and it got me thinking. If you look at the reviews they are completely split down the middle with people either loving the app or hating it. It all basically comes down to people who are willing to pay £10 a month to use the app (you need a premium account) and those who do not (and take issue with it being called a “free” app). Would you be wiling to pay over a £100 to effectively rent music for the year? Or is music, like a good book, something you want to be able to sleep next to at night?
I think, when it comes to entertainment, people want to consume it (and pay for it) in different ways. They either buy it, rent/subscribe it, or want it free (and are willing to tolerate adverts). I think this varies with the type of entertainment also (here I’m mostly talking about music, TV and movies).
With TV and movies, people are used to paying some form of subscription for most of their viewing (be it satellite, cable or via a TV license). They also accept that much of their subscription will be subsidised by advertising. Fans will want to buy DVDs of their favourite shows so they can watch them again.
This is somewhat perplexing if you think about it. How many people do you know that have all the Friends boxsets even though it’s repeated constantly on E4 (or The CW in the US)? How many times, on average, would you say that you have watched any individual DVD in your collection in the past few years? I imagine it’s close to once each.
With music I think the picture is a bit different. For each CD or mp3 you have bought I would imagine the average number of plays is much higher. Why is this? Well maybe it’s because with TV and movies it is a lot about the unknown. You enjoy the show, the ride you are taken on, but in most cases when you are done you want a new experience. Sure there will be a few movies that you love to watch over and over, but in general I expect that once you’ve watched it once (or maybe twice) you will want to move on.
The same isn’t as true with music. Familiarity with music brings attachment. Many songs are “growers” that you only really begin to enjoy after a few times. Music can also have attachments to particular emotions and memories as it can set the soundtrack to your life. Portability also plays a role (you can’t drive and watch TV – well at least not safely) and also music can be listened to whilst doing other things. Also there is collectibility – the joy of having the original music with artwork in something you can keep forever.
So how does this come back to the Spotify app? Well clearly Spotify is asking users to take a different approach to the way the listen to music. Unlike TV, people are not used to paying a subscription for music. So far they have either bought it (owned it), stole it (torrents), or got it for free with advertising attached (YouTube and Spotify desktop app).
A subscription to Spotify gives you access to millions of tracks, but only while you continue to pay a subscription. A soon as you stop paying you stop listening. For some people this is acceptable, others would rather know that after one year they had £120 worth of music they could call their own. The iPhone app gives you an illusion of ownership by allowing you to download playlists and showing the album art but if you stop paying it’ll all be gone. Probably with a TV/movie application this wouldn’t bother people but I think music is a different case.
There are a few things I would think about if I were Spotify. Firstly, I’d consider how to make the iPhone app truely free. This could use advertising, like the desktop app which is downloaded to the iPhone (and hence could be used offline), resticting the number of tracks you can play in a day, restricting the catalogue available, etc. Also I would look at in-app purchasing (available in OS3.0) to pay both for a premium subscription but also for the tracks themselves. A final thought would be to offer a paid app that maybe costs £5 and gives you a certain amount of subscription included.
Interesting, most of my dvd collection has been watched in the last 3 months (and we are not talking a small collection here) as we tend to keep what we love and watch it time and time again, and use love film & swap shops for anything we will only watch once. So using the same methodology for music, paying to listen to the things I like, and buying the things I love doesn’t seem so alien.
Wow – you’ve had a lot of spare time on your hands!
This is something that will be forced to the fore soon once our horrific copper network gets updated.
When we have a true two way network the way media is delivered and consumed will all move away from ownership and toward access.
As with Spotify if you can access potentially limitless music 24/7 there is no need to own a CD, tape or record (I hear some people still have the machines to play these…); anyone who (chooses words carefully) is in support of sharing is already partway down the road to this logical next step anyway.
Personally I’d have no problem with ditching my CD and DVD collection i favour of access to any film or song I wanted, whenever I wanted it – I’d never leave the sofa!
Even if that meant that you’d have to pay a subscription every month to get it? What if you couldn’t afford it one month?
@Stephen Tallamy
Well thanks for that validation of my liestyle choice stephen
@Stephen Tallamy
A fair point Stephen but at a current mere £10 per month it doesn’t seem a likely scenario. Imagine how much you spend on music a year, for most people this must be the cheaper option however, if it ever gets more expensive that might become a problem.